Woodbury Fire rockets past 100,000 acres, containment doubles
Jun 24, 2019, 7:32 AM | Updated: 7:59 pm
(Twitter Photo/@phxbetty)
(Twitter Photo/@phxbetty)
PHOENIX — The Woodbury Fire burning east of Phoenix jumped past 100,000 acres Monday but saw containment double, authorities said.
The blaze in the Superstition Mountains had reached 112,899 acres and jumped to 48% contained. An earlier Monday update showed the fire 25% contained.
Sunday evening, the fire had been estimated at 96,000 acres. That was less growth than earlier in the weekend.
The fire, the sixth-largest in state history, is still a few miles from homes along Roosevelt Lake.
“There’s no growth in that area … the fire is burning in interior pockets,” spokeswoman Pamela Mathis told KTAR News 92.3 FM, ” and what growth we did have was a combination of our crews’ burning operations around the perimeter.”
Much of the work was along State Route 188, she said.
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The burning operations were a “catcher’s mitt, if you will,” Mathis said, “to catch the fire as the winds shift (toward Highway 188).”
Crews did additional preventive burning on the roadway late Sunday into Monday morning.
About 900 personnel were at the site, InciWeb reported.
Campgrounds east of Roosevelt Dam were closed late last week.
State Route 188, which runs along the west side of Roosevelt Lake, has been closed from SR 88 at milepost 244 down to SR 288.
The human-caused fire began burning about 5 miles northwest of Superior on June 8.
Monday 6/24 #WoodburyFire AZ 112,899 acres per 10:48pm infrared flight yesterday + analysis by fire staff. Yellow crosshatch is the perimeter (several days old!) currently shown on the Inciweb interactive map.
Open #GISsurfer map: https://t.co/9hXW7c1UFl #AZfire pic.twitter.com/ybf78q6JbS— Joseph Elfelt (@MappingSupport) June 24, 2019
KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Jim Cross contributed to this report.
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